Our Little Kitten Magnet

But really! What are we to do? Where do they come from? I mean ... meowing directly outside of the one window in this house that belongs to a certain little girl whose defining character trait is "love of cats"? It's such a big farm for even one, tiny, homeless kitten to wander across to make it here. But for two to have done that in recent weeks?

It's really getting out of hand. 

But what is one to do? The pound doesn't want them. They'll spay or neuter strays for cheap but then just have you release them again. And who can let a tiny kitten starve? (Not that we would be able to let it starve even if we were that heartless. They just sneak up and eat the cat food we keep outside for our own cats after all. But having a little girl who loves them and fawns over them and comes outside to find and cuddle them and give them milk and carry them in to show off to everyone ... well it certainly encourages them to stick around! 

And who can blame them? She's got a good track record. Remember how Dusty looked when she found him in early August? 

Well, look at him now!

She's certainly establishing a good track record for helping them thrive! And they do love her. I was outside the other day as Dusty came by. I graciously offered to give him a pat and he fled from me. But Starling ... well ... they call to her for heaven's sake!

Ah well. The kids have less and less excuse to grumble over how strict I've become in forcing all cats to stay constantly outside these days. There are too many to let them in! We'd never even find them all in the house.

But goodness. 

No more cats! 

(How can we stop them from spreading the news to other stray kittens that Starling lives here and will find and love them if they just come?)

ANYWAY! 

Enough of that.

But speaking of things growing. 

Little Isaac will be one month by this weekend. 

And Nelly and Holly. They are growing too. (Actually, I don't know if they've grown much at all lately, but I needed to add this photo in somewhere.

Crafting (Minus Some of the Love) and Fall

For someone who doesn't really craft (remember when it took me six years to finish my Halloween witches?), I've sure been doing a lot of crafting lately. 

I think it started with this new house and the feeling that it might be fun to have holiday garlands in my big kitchen/living room windows ... only to discover that all the garlands one might ever find to buy were either too short or too expensive (or both). 

I quickly realized I would need to take matters into my own hands.

And thus the crafting. 

I'm no true crafter though. When I started on those yarn pumpkins, I was shocked that they actually took a decent amount of time. When I complained about this, Daisy explained something to me that I had not in the least understood. It was that one must craft not solely for the product but also "for the love of crafting". 

Hmm. Well. 

(Because the love was not wholly there, for my next pumpkin garland I skipped the yarn, bought a set of cheap velvet-looking pumpkins on Amazon, and hung those from twine. Nearly as cute and much less time-consuming.)

And, of course, I've found some things that a true crafter might have made all on their own, but I simply bought. Like these cute little friends making my house plants feel fall-ish.

And, as luck would have it, we got a surprising number of accidental pumpkins!

We didn't get a proper pumpkin patch going this year, but we had thrown all last year's leftovers into the pasture for the steers, and several sprouted. I thought there would be maybe seven in there. But there were all of these! A lot were quite small, but still a fun surprise! I can never have too many pumpkins. (We might even go so far as to say I can never have enough pumpkins.)

Speaking of fall: the Harvest Moon! (Isn't the sound of that just lovely? It's wonderful that we have a moon we call the Harvest Moon.)

This bottom one was taken when our smoke detectors all started going off before dawn Saturday morning. It took a solid half hour before we could figure out which one was faulty and get them all stopped. For a while I left Mike and Jesse to it and escaped the beeping by going outside--where the Harvest Moon greeted me.

And sort of related to Halloween coming: Daisy and Penny went as Wirt and Greg to FanX this past weekend:

If you've seen the strange, little series of Over the Garden Wall (it's not for everyone), you'll see them with this random person/wolf/dog and want to say, "You have beautiful eyes!"

A few of their cousins met them there as well.

Lastly, The Rental didn't have any deciduous trees. Not one! So it's quite happy to look out the windows or pull in our driveway and see leaves changing colors! (Though I still miss the amazing reds of our Pleasant View backyard maples. But my good Mike--who forever is thinking of the things that I love--bought me three the other day that we will try and get to grow here. Maples have trouble with low iron and with too much water, so we might have a hard time succeeding, but we got a variety that are supposed to be more water tolerant. So my fingers are crossed! In the meantime we have a smattering of red leaves sitting right next to my porch on these new trees, and I'm loving things turning yellow everywhere else around here. (There's not a week that goes by that my mind doesn't rejoicingly praise my father-in-law Alma for planting so many trees here! I don't even know what inspired him to do it. Certainly he couldn't have known then that it would be for us! I'm so grateful!)

Welcome to fall and holidays and decorating the house!

Mooing (and miscellany)

There has been a tremendous amount of mooing from the cows our neighbor keeps here lately. I really enjoy seeing cows directly outside my window. (Though perhaps sometimes it's a bit too directly. See image of an escaped calf staring straight in at me below.)

And I really don't even mind hearing them. (Sometimes I even like it.) But mooing is really best in small doses. And the mooing from around here, of late, has been in very large doses. 

Not that I blame them. All the babies have been fitted with large plastic rings in their noses to interfere with them nursing. And their mothers are all walking about in great discomfort just mooing and mooing and mooing. Mike tells me that, sad as this seems, keeping the calves with their moms during weaning is less stressful on the animals than simply separating them, but my goodness it doesn't make for a quiet farm!

On a positive note, our own calf is still happily with his own mother and I don't know that we will ever have to force weaning on him. (Of course ... what do I know? This is all still new to me.)

Other things?

This silly person. (I get sad sometimes thinking about all the darling pajamas she has that she won't wear.)

Hans up and made himself this shirt the other day. Dear kid.

Part of Wellsville was translated (taken directly up to heaven) recently. At least that's what I assume was happening here. It's a shame we are on unincorporated county land and, therefore, couldn't go up with the righteous of Wellsville.

I don't think we will get quite as much fog at the farm as we did at the rental. (When we lived at the rental I would often drive out of it right as I hit the bridge after the road to the farm.) But I was happy to wake up to this the other morning. It reassured me that we'll still get our share of mists and fogs. 

We, none of us, know exactly what made Starling draw this Darth-Vader-looking fellow, but we all love "Derfermaddek".

Anders joined cross-country this year. It's been such a great way for him to start high school--feeling involved and part of a team, etc.

Nelly

As I approach 50, I increasingly find myself feeling a bit blue about the endings I've begun to experience and that I see on the horizon. (The other day I asked Mike if we'd even still be here to see the trees we've planted at the farm reach full maturity! Endings were truly never a thing that occurred to me at all in my 20s and 30s when all of life seemed to be about forming a family, and creating traditions, and embarking on the adventures of adult life).

But there's been a definite shift in the last five or so years as the number of kids living in our home has begun decreasing rather than increasing (as it did for nearly two decades) and things that I used to take for granted (like running) are becoming a battle to keep even minimally a part of the road ahead. (You can't imagine--well, ok, maybe you can--how I looked forward to the long runs I would finally be able to easily take once I finally had all my kids in school. It's a hard pill to swallow that, despite a hopeful surgery, it appears that my knees might never truly allow that looked-forward to day.)

On the other hand (as Tevye would say), I often feel so much wonder and gratitude over just how extra long certain stages of my life have been extended! It seems unthinkable--far far too fleeting--to imagine my years of little kids eager to decorate for holidays: to go pick pumpkins, watch the traditional holiday specials, and create Christmas lists ... having ended as Abe, Daisy and Goldie left home. I feel so lucky to still get to be in that stage!

And here's another one I thought about the other day when Mike pulled up with our new horse Nelly! (Holly is a pony and will never be huge, but Nelly will be a full-sized horse perfectly capable of holding ... larger riders.)

(She's only six months, so we won't be riding her for a few years yet, but hopefully, eventually, both she and Holly will be perfect for riding around on. In the mean time ... isn't her coloring fun? I love the half black, half white of her mane and tail.)

From the time Abe was a toddler to now our kids have all experienced the excitement of new animals--whether it's been dogs, horses (we had horses back when Abe and Daisy were small), baby chicks, cats, hamsters, goats, cows, or just ... a "Spring Break" piglet or lamb. 

And as all the kids ran out excitedly to see the trailer opened and Nelly brought out, I thought how lucky I am to, nearly 26 years into parenting, still be experiencing little kids experiencing this.